AI: Queer Books

A book on asexuality by Anthony F. Bogaert aimed at educating general readers was recently released. I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet, but having seen it get positive reviews and attention from other asexual people I’m hoping it’ll turn up in a local library soon. It’s actually one of the first such books to be published – unsurprisingly, there haven’t been that many books published with explicit references to asexuality, though of course there are instances where you can interpret characters as asexual (here’s a reading list comprising works with both explicit and implicit references).
I’ve not made much headway in that list, but I’m hoping that when I have read a few more of those books (and a few more have been published) I’ll be able to recommend the best. I kind of wish more books that tackled asexuality head-on had been around when I was younger. It would have been valuable to see that I wasn’t alone, a feeling I suspect many asexual people share. I especially think more books should cover asexual relationships – far from being boring, as some people say, I think writers exploring previously unexplored (or undervalued) types of relationships would be very interesting (here’s that statement written a lot more eloquently and comprehensively) and, of course, beneficial to younger or less informed people. For now, however, I quite enjoy reading about other areas of LGBTQ* culture, though I still haven’t explore that much either.

Have you read any books – fiction or non-fiction – with LGBTQ* themes recently? What did you think of them? Do you have any long-standing recommendations, or alternatively books that failed to live up to your expectations? What area of LGBTQ* life would you most like to see explored more?

The Afternoon Inqueery (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Queereka community. Look for it to appear on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, at 3pm ET.

Courtney

Courtney is a theoretical physics student at Imperial College London, broadly identifying as cisfemale, panromantic, asexual and atheist. She lives with mental illness (worst room-mate ever) and hopes to help break down the stigma attached to admitting that. Her hobbies include campaigning, internetting and spectacularly failing to defy any stereotypes regarding British people and tea. She also identifies as an X-Phile/Browncoat/Whovian, which are clearly the most important things.